40 Years

In my wildest dreams I am a religious wanderer. A holy harlot. A spiritual slut.

In reality, I’ve only acted on that impulse a few times. When I was 21, on the precipice of leaving Tucson for good after graduation, I took the I-19 south into the desert to explore the San Xavier mission and surprised myself by joining evening mass, sitting and kneeling and standing a beat behind everyone else, struggling to make out the words to the unfamiliar hymns, simultaneously recoiling from and grasping toward the touch of strangers murmuring “peace be with you.” Mormons services aren’t nearly so physical.

When I was 29, on the precipice of leaving Mormonism for good after the church started excommunicating feminists again, I took Lakeshore Drive south, set on finding a church that ordained women and served the poor. I sat in on the Sunday morning service at LaSalle Street Church, my heart moved by the presence of the female preacher, while my mind tripped over reference to the Trinity. Mostly I hushed my toddler. Mormon services aren’t nearly so quiet.

I was enchanted by the threads of mystery and wonder I saw glinting in traditions that weren’t my own. Eating latkes by candlelight with a Jewish family in sixth grade. Rock music in a darkened auditorium with an Evangelical youth group in tenth. Stained glass and gold and towering men made of stone on my honeymoon in Rome. The magic of Mormonism is more practical. A family in my neighborhood growing up surviving their father’s long-term unemployment by the miracle of food storage. Millions of adults miraculously waking up each morning without so much as a drop of coffee.

Even so, my divine dalliances were few and far between. I skipped a lot of church over the years, and while I’d like to think I spent that time in meditation or studying Eastern religious texts, the truth is that I was far more invested in Earthly pursuits. Sleeping in. Sunday brunch. Sex.

I recommitted to more traditional, more visible efforts at worship when my daughter was born. I knew enough to know that she wouldn’t spontaneously absorb my dormant faith. She had to see it. So I practiced the religion I knew. I took her to Mormon sacrament services. I pieced together fragments of melody from my memories of the Mormon children’s hymnbook and sang them to her before bed. I prayed to the Mormon Heavenly Father. I prayed to the Mormon Heavenly Mother, too, when I felt especially lost or heretical.

I meant to raise my daughter Mormon-plus, to give her a community along with the power to walk away from it, by introducing her to other religious traditions and honoring their legitimacy. In so doing I hoped to satisfy both my lust for the unfamiliar and my human need to belong.

Mormonism is so big, though, so all-encompassing, that it’s hard to be Mormon-plus-anything. Hell, it’s hard enough to be Mormon. Before I knew it, I had a calling teaching the women in my congregation that made it logistically difficult to church hop, at least with a baby. Before I knew it, my baby was a toddler, curious and kind but tentative around new people and it took her so long to acclimate to the Mormon nursery program that I couldn’t fathom doing it again with the Methodists, the Episcopalians, the Baha’i ad infinitum. We stuck with Mormonism for comfort and convenience and I promised my daughter I’d show her a wider world of worship when we were more settled.

And then the timer running on my relationship with Mormonism hit zero. It was not expected. I’d set the timer myself, but hadn’t realized how little time there had been on it, and had forgotten about it in any case. It was not convenient. I thought we’d have years of dilettante-ing in and out of the other congregations in the neighborhood. Instead, I woke up one morning and realized we had to go.

And, of course, now that I finally have the opportunity to stretch my theological boundaries, to spread my hungry wings, I don’t want it. I didn’t know that community is what I wanted most of all until I was exiled from my own. It wasn’t until I spent Sunday morning fielding dirty looks from church ladies every time my toddler fidgeted in the pew that I discovered that Christianity outside Mormonism isn’t all that family friendly. It wasn’t until I found myself in crisis — struggling mightily not to breathe life into a decade-old monster — that I realized I don’t need freedom. I need a church that will have me. Maybe fix me up when I am ready, but first take me in. After years of wandering around the edges of the desert, romanticizing a life in the sun, now that I’m neck deep in sand no water in sight, all I have to say is fuck wonder. Give me shelter.